What gets them renominated

The selection of a poll candidate depends on several factors, including wealth, educational qualification, and existence of criminal cases

Methodology

■ An individual from the pool of candidates in 2009 was classified as “renominated” if he or she received at least 20% voteshare in 2014 (i.e., renominated for a consequential party ticket). An analysis was undertaken to understand which background characteristics for the pool of candidates in 2009 are associated with renomination.

■ Data on electoral outcomes for 2009 and 2014 are provided in a user-friendly format by the Trivedi Centre for Political

Data (TCPD) at Ashoka University. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) provides electronic data on publicly declared affidavits upon filing for public candidature, which has details of the wealth, pending serious criminal cases, and educational background of almost every candidate. After making appropriate restrictions, the study ended up with a pool of 1020 candidates in 2009 for the analysis (480 of whom were elected).

■ Candidate filings are far from systematic from

election to election (even names don’t match across filings), so an approximation algorithm was used to detect which candidates were renominated.

■ In order to isolate the relationship of these characteristics to renomination rates, a statistical model was used to simultaneously estimate the probability of renomination as a function of the MP’s, pending serious criminal cases, level of education, moveable asset wealth, political party, and home state.